It was probably bad timing for me to list some sales right before the holidays but here we are. My local USPS here in NYC has had crazy lines outside any time I’ve tried to go to mail some things out. Yesterday morning, looking at another long line, my wife suggested we go to one of those 3rd party “mailing services” spots that say they facilitate USPS mail.
Before I walked over, I called the spot to make sure I could mail a flat rate USPS package from their place. I found it mildly suspicious that the woman on the line told me in VERY STRONG terms that she would highly advise me to stay away from USPS and ship FedEx or a similar service that they also offer. She stated “everything has been getting lost” through USPS, which sounded a little strange to me. Still, she said that they do handle USPS packages so I decided to head over. I joked with my wife on the way over they they probably hate on the USPS because they don’t make much $ simply printing people postage for those packages.
When we arrived and I went up the counter, the co-owner immediately saw my stack of USPS packages and got ready to tell me the bad news. “25 of all packages sent through USPS around this time of year have been getting lost.” I had never heard such a (seemingly outrageous) claim but he went on to explain that because of the holidays and staffing situation at USPS, coupled with the virus, had led to historic amount of lost packages. “If you have anything you can’t lose, I would never ship USPS, it’s not reliable.” After another minute of clarifications on my end (he also told me that anything I sent via USPS yesterday would arrive “the third week of January”), he suggested I send my package via FedEx and quoted me a $79 price for my medium sized flat rate USPS box (reboxed) including ~$2000 insurance and a signature. He told me that USPS would charge $92 for the same service. At the time the $92 seemed like much more than I have spent at USPS but it was getting to be a stressful situation with a long line behind me, so I agreed to the FedEx.
On my way home I looked at the USPS website and calculated it costing me closer to $40-45 total with USPS, making me even more annoyed I didn’t trust my instincts. Has anyone had similar experiences with these 3rd party services? Anyone heard this claim of USPS “losing 25% of packages during this holiday period?”
Curious to hear how much of a scumbag this dude really was which will inform my next steps re: leaving public reviews and requesting an apology.
Before I walked over, I called the spot to make sure I could mail a flat rate USPS package from their place. I found it mildly suspicious that the woman on the line told me in VERY STRONG terms that she would highly advise me to stay away from USPS and ship FedEx or a similar service that they also offer. She stated “everything has been getting lost” through USPS, which sounded a little strange to me. Still, she said that they do handle USPS packages so I decided to head over. I joked with my wife on the way over they they probably hate on the USPS because they don’t make much $ simply printing people postage for those packages.
When we arrived and I went up the counter, the co-owner immediately saw my stack of USPS packages and got ready to tell me the bad news. “25 of all packages sent through USPS around this time of year have been getting lost.” I had never heard such a (seemingly outrageous) claim but he went on to explain that because of the holidays and staffing situation at USPS, coupled with the virus, had led to historic amount of lost packages. “If you have anything you can’t lose, I would never ship USPS, it’s not reliable.” After another minute of clarifications on my end (he also told me that anything I sent via USPS yesterday would arrive “the third week of January”), he suggested I send my package via FedEx and quoted me a $79 price for my medium sized flat rate USPS box (reboxed) including ~$2000 insurance and a signature. He told me that USPS would charge $92 for the same service. At the time the $92 seemed like much more than I have spent at USPS but it was getting to be a stressful situation with a long line behind me, so I agreed to the FedEx.
On my way home I looked at the USPS website and calculated it costing me closer to $40-45 total with USPS, making me even more annoyed I didn’t trust my instincts. Has anyone had similar experiences with these 3rd party services? Anyone heard this claim of USPS “losing 25% of packages during this holiday period?”
Curious to hear how much of a scumbag this dude really was which will inform my next steps re: leaving public reviews and requesting an apology.
